Woman Obsessed with Lindsay Clancy Trial Accused of Killing Her Son And Plotting to Poison Husband
Prosecutors now claim that a woman who was obsessed with the Lindsay Clancy trial plotted to poison her husband on top of killing her 2-year-old son, reports say — even as her husband stands by her.
The case of 40-year-old Corie Walsh, who admitted to law enforcement that she asphyxiated her son, Barrett, on Sept. 1 — hours after talking about the Clancy trial on a group chat — has claimed she was also in the throes of psychosis when the death occurred.
According to a Thursday Fox News report, court documents indicate Walsh told officers that she thought her son was the “devil” and “Antichrist” when they responded to the family’s home in Frankfort, Illinois.
The New York Post says that when she was informed her son was dead during police questioning, she broke out into the song “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” from “The Wizard of Oz.”
Initial court reports indicated that officers entered the home after a neighbor found Barrett hanging from a rafter in the basement.
“She removed the ligature, lowered the child to the ground, and attempted CPR while calling 911. According to the neighbor, Barrett was cold and had no pulse,” prosecution documents alleged.
Officers were then “directed to an upstairs bathroom located in the master bedroom… reportedly due to this defendant, the mother of the victim, attempting to harm herself.”
Walsh was found in the bathtub “fully dressed” and “surrounded by bloody water.” She was charged with murder after Barrett died later in the afternoon due to asphyxia, and reports said she had become obsessed with the Clancy case, even discussing it in text message exchanges just before the killing of Barrett.
Now comes another similarity to the Clancy case: Walsh’s husband is standing by his wife, even as authorities say she had plotted to poison him.
WLS-TV reported that Walsh was threatening to poison her husband when he returned from a trip, and that a drink and prescription medication were found on a counter at the house.
Prosecutors further allege that Walsh had threatened to kill the couple’s other three children.
However, Walsh’s defense team says that Walsh’s husband and mother have “unwavering” love and support for her and insist she killed the child due to an episode of psychosis.
“This is a tragedy for the Walsh family, all of whom are mourning the loss of this child,” attorney Andrea Lyon told Fox News.
“It is also a tragedy in that Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened.”
Although Lyon said her client was “psychotic,” it would be “baseless and cruel” to describe what happened as a copycat Clancy incident.
“They are not correlated at all. It’s just accidental.”
There is one difference in the case, which is the matter of the law: While both Massachusetts and Illinois use the same Model Penal Code standard in insanity pleas, in Illinois the burden of proof is on the defendant’s side to substantiate that they did not have the “substantial capacity” to either understand that what they were doing was wrong or to conform their “conduct to the requirements of law.” Massachusetts puts the burden of proof on the prosecution.
WLS chief legal analyst Gil Soffer said that the ties to the Clancy case will be harmful to the defense in attempting to prove that their client is not guilty by reason of insanity.
“The defense is seeing it as a threat, as a problem to be contended with because the prosecution is arguing that she understood what was happening,” he said. “It’s a harder road to here than it is for the defense in Massachusetts.”
However, it’s worth noting that Walsh’s attorney, Lyon, has a connection to another high-profile case in which a not guilty verdict was reached: She was part of the defense team that got Casey Anthony acquitted in the 2011 murder trial of her 2-year-old daughter in Florida, which attracted national attention.
Walsh’s next appearance in court will be on Sept. 24.
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